I was wondering if anyone on here may have an original factory fitted stereo that they may kindly be able to send me a photo of the front & rear. I have found a company on ebay that sell stereo fascia for fiats, citroens & various other makes that are specifically for when you remove the factory fitted stereo & wish to fit a std single din cd stereo. I messaged him to ask if they done one for piaggio porter or dishatsu van & he asked for pic of the original stereo. I have replied stating it had none but thought I would ask on here. I will take pics & measurements of the area where the stereo should go to send also. I would much rather be able to fit the stereo where it should go if i can & fit a cd player. I already have a redundant vinyl collection & tape collection & don't have an mp3 player or hours of time to put cds onto pc to then put on sd cards. Another thing......how on earth do you log what is on sd cards....not like you can list the tracks on a cover or copy the album artwork. I like flipping through a collection & see what takes my fancy to listen to that day

IIRC the Hijet was designed before the advent of CD's so the depth required for such a head unit was not in the design brief. Also as it was a commercial vehicle creature comforts weren't high in the list either. Ergo the shallow din slot to accept nothing more than an old MW/LW radio. As a later "update" (read: bodge) the underdash centre console was added to allow fitting of a deeper stereo.

If you can't source a centre console, you could make a decent quality copy out of a sheet of mdf to accept the radio of your choice - it is a simple design which could be knocked up in an afternoon.

With regards to listening to mp3 files in the car - I have several hundred cds bought through the years. I haven't ripped them to all to mp3 yet, rather I do it on a more adhoc basis. If I fancy listening to a cd then I play it on the pc and rip it at the same time, saving it to an external hard drive for playing in the car later. When I want to listen to it in the car, it's a simple matter of dragging and dropping onto a sd card - much better than having an armful of cds rattling around the van with the potential of them getting damaged.